Desired State Configuration (DSC) is a feature new to Windows PowerShell 4.0 that allows you to manage the configuration of computers, accomplishing many of the objectives with Windows PowerShell that you could otherwise accomplish using compliance settings with Configuration Manager. You can use DSC to perform the following tasks:
- Ensuring that server roles and features are either enabled or disabled
- Managing registry settings
- Managing files and directories
- Managing service and the state of processes
- Managing user and group accounts
- Software deployment
- Managing environment variables
- Assessing configuration state
- Remediating configuration drift
When using DSC, you define a Windows PowerShell script block using the configuration keyword. This script block allows you to specify the desired configuration for each computer (termed nodes in DSC). Within the script block, you can define resource blocks as a way of configuring specific resources. When you invoke the configuration, a MOF file is created in a new directory that is a child of the current directory with the same name as the configuration block. The newly created MOF file stores configuration information about the target computers. You can enforce the configuration by running the Start-DscConfiguration cmdlet.
